By Kathy Berken
On Deck
When I was the staff reporter at The Compass newspaper of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, my editor, Tony Staley, told me that when stories have bylines, people are much more likely to read them. Attaching a name to an article makes it more personal and the story has the potential to be more relatable.
Since the Bible was written by believers inspired by God, shouldn’t these stories also include God’s byline? What is God’s name? For that, we have to ask Moses. In the story of the Burning Bush, God calls out, “Moses! Moses!” and he responds, “Here I am.” God tells him to come no closer and to take off his sandals, “for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
God continues, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Moses asked God what name he should give the Israelites when he tells them that the God of their fathers has sent him. God told Moses to give them this name: “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3: 4-6, 13-14).
In Hebrew, this is translated as YHWH, a name considered too sacred to speak. However, Scripture scholars suggest “Yahweh” as a close pronunciation, derived from the Hebrew verb “hayah” (“to be”). Hence, God’s byline would be YHWH or I AM.
In his poem, “The Opening of Eyes,” Celtic poet David Whyte wrote, “It is Moses in the desert / fallen to his knees before the lit bush. / It is the man throwing away his shoes / as if to enter heaven / and finding himself astonished, / opened at last, / fallen in love with solid ground” (“Songs for Coming Home,” 1989).
Moses’ encounter with Yahweh and David Whyte’s interpretation of that event shows us some of the mystery of God. Moses is so taken by this experience that he not only removes his sandals but throws them away “as if to enter heaven” where he finally feels the ground beneath his bare feet. The full embrace of the Mystery of the Divine moves him to the point of taking up the challenge to defeat the Egyptian army, trusting completely that God will protect him as the leader of the Israelites who will set them free.
Trusting and embracing the mystery of God is foundational to the spiritual life, fed through regular contemplative practices. The late Trappist monk Father Thomas Merton explained: “Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder.”
He said that our encounter with the Divine Mystery through meditation “. . . is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. . . . It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.”
Father Merton’s life of contemplative prayer at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky was filled with God encounters. He wrote, “In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have. And you realize that you are already there. All we need to do is experience what we already possess.”
Moses already possessed the necessary attributes to lead the Israelites to freedom but his encounter with YHWH increased his trust. When your trust is waning and you feel distant from God, I invite you to sit in contemplation, returning to Father Merton’s words about “spontaneous awe” that comes from an invisible, transcendent Being who is beyond all understanding. We embrace the Mystery of God with our arms extended, our hearts open and our sandals off.
(Kathy Berken is a spiritual director and retreat leader in St. Paul, Minnesota. She lived and worked at L’Arche in Clinton — The Arch from 1999-2009.)
